IBM May Buy 20% of Billionaire Batista’s SIX Unit, Veja Says

March 31 (Bloomberg) -- International Business Machines
Corp. is buying a 20 percent stake in SIX, the technology unit
of Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista, Veja reported in its
Radar online column, without saying where it obtained the
information.

IBM has also agreed on a contract worth $1 billion to
provide services to Batista’s company for 10 years, Veja said.
Batista, who has a memorandum of understanding signed with IBM
last year, will announce the agreement soon, the magazine said.

A spokeswoman for IBM in Sao Paulo declined to comment on
the report when contacted by Bloomberg News today. A media
official at EBX Group Co., the holding company for most of
Batista’s assets, didn’t have an immediate comment when
contacted by Bloomberg News today.